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Originally Posted by TLAM Strike
I guess this book was suppose to "connect" with us.  |
Heh, books about "teen angst" didn't appeal much to me even when I was a teenager.
Although I do remember liking
A Separate Peace quite a bit. Mensch, I haven't though about that book in ages.
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The only books in school that I liked (of those assigned) were Fahrenheit 451, and Lord of the Flies. Plus the Shakespeare we read aloud in class.
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I had an English teacher (altho he wasn't my English teacher - I was just in his study hall) when I was twelve who handed me his well-worn copy of
The Illustrated Man one day and told me he thought I'd enjoy it. I did, and I probably still have more Ray Bradbury books on my fiction shelf than books by any other author except for Terry Pratchett. It was a long and passionate affair, lol.
Er, I mean with Bradbury's books. NOT THE ENGLISH TEACHER.
I remember reading
Lord of the Flies more than once, so I must've liked it. Can't say I cared too much for the movie when I finally saw it though. TBH I don't remember getting too into any of the American authors we read, not the modern ones anyway. I loved certain of the books,
To Kill A Mockingbird for instance, but of course she didn't write anything else. Well and I kind of developed a fondness for what we read of Steinbeck later on, but I don't think I appreciated it at the time. And I completely bailed on James Fenimore Cooper, I can't remember what I read to make up for not reading the assigned book there. (I had a very understanding lit teacher, who would let me get away with choosing something else to read if I just couldn't muster an interest in something on the standard list.)
But I feel I've made up for this since by watching
The Last of the Mohicans about two zillion times.
Oh but I liked some the older dudes - Hawthorne, Poe. Still have my high school copy of
Moby Dick too, all dog-eared and floppy and with passages highlighted in 3-4 different colors from when I was pulling together my essay on same.
But most of the literature that I remember really loving and following up on in later years on my own was from English Lit. Shakespeare, Dickens, some of the poets, Joseph Conrad... who I still find amazing considering that English was not his native language and he apparently learned it "on the job" during his time in the British Merchant Marines. And from the "intro to lit" course we had freshman year that covered stuff from all over the place.